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These things could get in the way of your Facebook uploads (Credit: Metro/Getty)

Is there anything more annoying than slow wi-fi? Didn’t think so.

In a world where we live our lives online, having a fast, reliable connection is more important than ever. We just don’t need things like Christmas lights getting in the way of uploading our latest Instagram pics.

But these festive ornaments aren’t the only things that interfere with your signal. There are others that disrupt your internet shopping or Facebook habit.

Here are 5 other surprising things that can slow down your connection.

1) Lamps and fridges

This has a lot to do with the position of your router. In a similar way to Christmas lights, lamps are another electronic device that can interfere with your connection.

Experts from Ofcom found earlier this month that lamps alongside fridges, speakers, baby monitors, cordless phones and garage door openers were responsible for interfering with a wi-fi signal as it travels to a computer.

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It is because all these devices transmit radio waves, which are similar to the signals sent out by your router.

The best way to avoid this problem is to position your router so it is not anywhere near these and similar electronic objects.

Two wi-fi adapters were placed at opposite ends of a room. Signal completely dropped when someone crossed into the path of the signal, and it scattered with the presence of human bodies in the room but not in the direct path of the signal.

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Scientists hope to use these findings to be able to count the number of people in a room using wi-fi for security and search-and-rescue operations.

4) Your Netflix habit

Why are you so addictive, Netflix (Photo: Getty)

Or your habit of using applications that hog a lot of bandwidth. Some of the biggest culprits include Netflix, cloud services such as DropBox, online games and torrenting websites (not that you would you any of those against the law of course).

If someone in your house is up to the third season during an Orange is the New Black marathon, you shouldn’t be surprised if your connection starts acting up.

You can change this so that your router knows which apps to prioritise bandwidth for with the Quality of Service feature. You can usually find it within your router’s settings.

5) Your location

No wi-fi to be seen here (Photo: Simon Carey)

No, we don’t mean how close you and your laptop are to the router. That one’s obvious.

The matter of the fact is that some areas will just have better broadband, therefore wi-fi, coverage than others as it depends on how well connected they are – there can be massive geographical differences in speed.

The street with the slowest broadband speed was found earlier this year to be Williamson Road in Lydd-on-Sea, Kent, with a tiny speed of 0.535 megabits per second.